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Do you know how detergent works? If you vaguely remember your senior chemistry, you would know that it is a long molecule, one end is hydrophillic, or water loving, the other is hydrophobic, or water hating. What that means is that one end grabs on to the water molecules, one end grabs on to grease [...]

Little girl was very excited to find a lizard and gently patted it with one finger. It was obviously not a well lizard, which added to the mice and chickens in our ongoing lesson about death being a part of life and where food comes from. But while it lived it was fascinating to get so [...]

Apparently humans don’t play well with others, especially large predators that might eat our farm animals. One way to protect them is to give them a value to their local community, and one of the best ways of doing that is through tourism.

I‘ve had a soft spot for shadow puppets ever since the big girl was a baby and would get hysterical in the car at night. A little torch shining at her feet or the toys dangling over her and she would stop screaming and happily watch the dancing shadows. I was very disappointed to discover [...]

There, amongst the sere brown grasses, a patch of green. Big girl spotted this strange phenomenon. I suspect those ferns under the large and luxurious bushes hold the answer, and diagnose a broken pipe.

Our last place was a children’s paradise – an old hobby farm which had been owned by a collector and had two children growing up. It was absolutely covered in stuff. Garden ornaments, knick knacks, marbles, little glass stars (why?), broken wind chimes, bottles, dog toys, old batteries, you name it, it was buried somewhere [...]

I got a rare chance to play with my girls at the museum. Big girl’s explanation is that they must weigh different amounts, so she was testing it. She did explain why they went up to different heights. And I heroically did not tell her the answer, she can play with it another day.

Remember these? I was inspired by Kate at Picklebums, but with our own twist. Because we’re not about the art, we’re about the science. So we didn’t make pretty rockets, we compared all sorts of different materials to see which goes the furthest. On second thoughts, maybe we’re not scientists so much as insanely competitive. And [...]

I remember doing these as a kid and for some reason I thought they were very complicated, but they turned out to be really simple. Perhaps it’s just that my artistic standards have slipped, the girls were thrilled to have something that looked like a recognisable face rather than being disappointed it wasn’t a perfect [...]

I adore it when things are as beautiful as they are functional. I took this picture with the iPhone that has also replaced my watch. But no matter what cover I put on it, it will never be as beautiful as this sun dial. And no matter how good my phone plan, it will never [...]